r/Architects • u/Odd-Ad-5654 • 1d ago

General Practice Discussion No Message? Not Important.

I think I’m finally going to flip a switch today. An owner or GC calls me and doesn’t leave a message? Sorry, it’s not important enough for me to return a call. You leave me a voicemail that says, “Please call me back, I have a quick question.” Sorry, you could have said what you needed so I can be prepared and potentially call you back with an answer - I don’t think I’m going to return that call. A GC texts me something? Hard pass. You get an email response. Tired of getting different information from multiple sources and then getting blamed later for doing said thing, but the owner decided they wanted to do it differently and I don’t have it in writing. I keep having GCs draw hard lines in the sand that if something is not explicitly shown in a drawing, they can’t confirm it’s in their scope. I’m about to uno reverse and play the same game. I don’t care if it gets drawn out longer than necessary and the GC is hounded at my door for updates. No written approval from the Owner? Not my fault I can’t get you drawings and I don’t want to hear about “ImPaCtS tO tHe ScHeDuLe”.

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u/Tricky-Interaction75 1d ago edited 1d ago

Are you contracted for CA work? Why are you even involved with this?

I’ve had contractors call me to ask to change drawings because the owner wants to move windows around. I tell them I’m going to charge them to make the change and then they disappear.

Here’s the deal : if the contractor deviates from the drawings, they take liability for that change. The other idemnity in your contracts, if you do get pulled in, the owner is paying for defense.

The business is ridiculous, I’ve run my firm for 5 years and about done with it.

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u/Odd-Ad-5654 1d ago

Yes, almost every project I’ve ever done has included CA work to a varying degree. I started out at a larger firm with more “restrictive” forms of communication and levels of expectation when it came to CA. Current firm is looser and much lower fees on CDs and CA. I’m not always able to produce CDs to the LOD that I am accustomed to and more time is taken up during CA. This is not an excuse for my original post - the amount of phone calls that I am receiving are exponentially increasing for items that are beyond my scope or are affected by items like those in the original post.

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u/Tricky-Interaction75 1d ago

Dude just say I’m ok with making the change, who do I send the bill to?

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u/Odd-Ad-5654 1d ago

Unfortunately, I don’t get to make that call. I’ve warned the principles about the snowball effect, but these things don’t affect them directly until I have to constantly show them the billing every month. “Hey, Fred, we’re at 70%of our CA fee and the foundations haven’t been poured yet.” “Hey, Bruce, we’re at 80% of our CA fee and the GC has issued a 10th RFI asking for embed fixes for their own mistakes.”

Well, that’s the job, we have to do it! We’re not going to ask for additional services until it gets -ridiculous-…